1. THE THREE-LEVEL STRUCTURE OF LAW
The whole structure of law is seen from a formal aspect to be composed of three levels of law: official law, unofficial law, and legal postulate.
Official law is the legal system sanctioned by the legitimate authority of a country.
State law is ordinarily understood as a typical official law or even the only official law. Truly, it is directly sanctioned by the legitimate authority of the government of a state to have overall jurisdiction over the country. But as a matter of nature it is only one among many official laws of a country, however dominant it may appear over the others. For instance, as in most contemporary countries with established religions, religious law may be partially included in or accommodated by state law, but partially functioning out of the jurisdiction of the latter, thus forming its own system different from state law. Canon law, Islamic law, Hindu law, Buddhist law, and Judaic law are among typical examples. Other examples may be found in the laws of marriage and family, land and farming, local organizations, professional guilds, castes and stratifications, ethnic minorities, and so on, insofar as officially sanctioned by state law in one form or another. Each of these official laws of a country is sanctioned first by an authority of its own. But all of them are required to keep consonance with one another. To fulfil this requirement, each of them must, finally, be sanctioned by the state authority. However, as far as each of them forms an independent system of law, it may in actuality work in indifference to the other official laws and, accordingly, be in conflict with them.Unofficial law is the legal system not officially sanctioned by any legitimate authority, but sanctioned in practice by the general consensus of a certain circle of people, whether within or beyond the bounds of a country. That general consensus may be either consciously recognized and expressed in formal rules, or unconsciously observed in particular patterns of behaviour.
However, not all such unofficial practices supported by general consensus are to be included in unofficial law. Unofficial law is here limited to those unofficial practices which have a distinct influence upon the effectiveness of official law; in other words those which distinctively supplement, oppose, modify, or undermine any of the official laws, including state law. The effectiveness of the total system of official law is thus dependent upon the status quo of the unofficial law of the country concerned. One of the most important problems of unofficial law is therefore its positive or negative influence upon official law as well as its cultural background. While model jurisprudence has tended to disregard it, unofficial law has been treated in various rubrics in sociological and anthropological trends. For example, such rubrics are frequently found as customary law, living law, law in action, primitive law, tribal law, native law, and folk law4, although their specific connotations should be carefully distinguished from one another.A legal postulate5 is a value principle or value system specifically connected with a particular official or unofficial law, which acts to found, justify and orient the latter. It may consist of established legal ideas such as natural law, justice, equity, and so on in model jurisprudence; sacred truths and precepts emanating from various gods in religious law; social and cultural postulates affording the structural and functional basis for a society as embodied in clan unity, exogamy, bilineal descent, seniority, individual freedom, national philosophy, and so on; political ideologies, often closely connected with economic policies, as in capitalism or socialism; and so on. The legal postulates of a country, whether official or unofficial, are as a whole required to keep a certain degree of consonance with one another. But complete consonance cannot be expected. First, because as each legal postulate is in support of a particular system of official or unofficial law, the potential of conflict with other systems, as pointed out above, is high. Second, because the legal postulate may tend to upset the status quo of its supported official or unofficial law in order to improve or even replace the latter. Formally speaking, a minimum integration among the legal postulates of a country should be preserved if the people are to maintain their national identity. But the nature of integration, and accordingly its modes and degrees, may differ from culture to culture.